The policy of the Egyptian administration has for a long time been that
of pacification of the desert inhabitants, of their assimilation and of a partly
forced sedentariness. Today the government is undertaking intensive efforts to
create a loyalty to Egypt among the Bedouin in the border areas with Israel,
Libya and the Sudan. Thus the Bedouin on Sinai are granted newly reclaimed
agricultural land, and for the Awlad Ali in Marsa Matruh Governorate the state
is implementing development projects, providing schools and fresh water as
well as support for land reclamation. After the armed border conflict between
Egypt and the Sudan about the Halayeb area on the Red Sea, which broke out
after mineral resources had been discovered there in the 1990s, Egypt started
building schools, hospitals and roads for the Bishariyiin population there. How-
ever, the old reciprocal animosity between the Bedouin and the rest of the